I think that Hughes and Rankine share a connection. Like Jeremy writes “Both Hughes and Rankine describe their struggle as blacks living in America and the harsh segregation they experience in their lives.” The speaker in Hughes “I too” says “I, too am America.”(18) He feels that he is like a “brother” to white men, making them equal and he fe…[Read more]

Like Kaylin explains Knight “conveys a strong feeling of isolation and detachment from his large family.” In Knights poem he separates himself from his family saying “they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee.” Knight separates this poem to clearly show us how just because someone looks just like their family and is a part of a famil…[Read more]

Its good that we understood the “new sentence,” by Bob Perelman before we read his perplexing poem “Chronic Meanings.” I liked how Debra questioned Perelman’s work “the lines really did not connect to each other to form a coherent message. Or did it?” I had a hard time forming any connections of Bobs choices of topics for his stanzas. I th…[Read more]

To answer Max’s first question I think Rich promoted the idea that it’s bad that one’s words can be used differently but ultimately she shows that you have to speak up regardless of the consequences. Rich writes out “Everything we write will be used against us (11-12) with this in mind one should be conscious of what they are writing.” Like max…[Read more]

I think the relationship the speaker has with her father is a fearing one out of respect. In “Full Fathom Five” Plath describes the father as an “old man”, older people are usually respected for their wisdom. Plath gives descriptions like a god coming from the sea which also makes the speaker feel belittled. The god has with “white hair” sym…[Read more]

I agree with Deborah that these lines contain a self disclosure from Ginsburg. I liked her view especially that “Ginsberg writes, the speaker is standing before the audience (the “you”) and “confessing out the soul,” …this is in line with what Ginsberg is indeed doing in this poem- he is confessing, he is revealing himself.” I think Ginsburg is l…[Read more]

I found Max’s explanation as to why they stopped at a zoo as symbolic very interesting. “The zoo represents the fact that at the end of the subway ride, him and his friends ends up as mindless as animals.” I agree that it is symbolism that it says the “drear light of zoo” that it was not by chance. They are experimenting with different drugs all…[Read more]

Miriam explains Goldberg named his painting Sardines “he put it in his painting because “it needed something there” (9) but then a few lines later Goldberg takes it out since he though “It was too much” (16). In the end though, the painting is named sardines even though there are no sardines in it.” ” Answering Miriam’s question as to why I think…[Read more]

I think that Tara’s view how “Hughes also says that blacks have to eat in the kitchen “when company comes” (4).”…. “In other words, deep down, the whites aren’t really racist.” This Is an improvement at least not all whites where racist and they where just Putting on a show for their company out of fear. To answer Tara’s first question I think th…[Read more]

I liked what Debra said how at the end of Jazz as Communication “Finally, Hughes gives a definition based on what Jazz means to him and says, “Jazz is a montage of a dream deferred.” After reading this line I realized why we were told to read the second poem “Harlem.” ” Answering Debra’s first question I think Harlem relates to Jazz because that…[Read more]

Marc starts his response by telling us what the first thing that stood out to him was “The first aspect of this poem that obviously stood out to me was the speaker’s use of repetition.” The repetition is clear to anyone who reads the poem. At first I thought this tong twister- like poem sounds like Stein was trying to write like a person with…[Read more]

Dickinson is portraying a speaker who is insane. This is seen starting from the first line of the poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”(1). The speaker could have said it felt like a funeral but instead states what […]

I found it interesting that Bella said that it sounds like the speaker had a migraine, because the first thing that I wrote in my annotations for this poem was “sounds like she has a migraine”. I also agree with the rest of what Bella said, that the numbness is connected to the migraine, and the word “again” makes it sound like she’s had this feeling before. One thing I found interesting about the last line was that the poem really makes the reader feel like they’re in a casket with the speaker, being lowered down into the ground. The poem ends very abruptly in middle of a thought, with “and Finished knowing – then – “ which makes it sound like the speaker is speaking from her casket, while it’s being lowered, and all of a sudden it’s buried in the ground, and you can’t hear her finish the rest of her thought.

When I first read “I felt a Funeral in my Brain” I would have agreed that the narrator must be crazy, but, on my second time reading it I stating thinking that maybe the poem was about thought. As the poem starts with the funeral that is going on inside the speaker’s brain, I thought it may be a reference to something other than insanity. Dickinson uses many references to brain and thoughts; she uses words such as brain (1), sense (4), and thought (7). In the first stanza she speaks of “mourners… treading- treading- till it seemed that sense was breaking through” (2-4). This could be speaking about the thoughts that are going back and forth in the speakers’ mind, accepting some while rejecting others, until sense breaks through. In the last stanza the narrator seems to have reached a low point in his or her thoughts as they “dropped down, and down” (18) and “at every plunge” (19) lost a world of knowledge until they felt that everything they thought they knew may have not been true, “and Finished knowing- then-” (20).

The funeral scene is an interesting choice as a way to display one’s madness. With a funeral scene, there can be two descriptions of madness: one seen from the person who has died and one seen from the people that have attended the funeral. The speaker discusses how she hears “A Service, like a Drum— kept beating-beating” and someone with “Boots of Led” stomp across the floor as he lifts a box. These noises and actions seem to annoy her and her reaction to them is seen from her reply “My Mind was going numb,” which can be an indication of how the speaker feels about her madness. A second description can be seen from the attendees of the funeral as well. They must be upset and possibly angered by her death, which is probably what the speaker is feeling.

I like the idea of the speaker being crazy, it is an interesting interpretation. I interpreted this poem as someone who is actually at a funeral. I felt that the sadness made the speaker space out so that her body is there but her mind is drifting, as students we know this experience well. All of the sensory ideas she refers to are her senses gathering information, she just insn’t focused on them. Then, at the end, she broke out of her trance, “going down,” and “hit a world” of where she really was. Here her emotions got the better of her and could no longer think or remember the events, “finished knowing.” This is how i understood the poem, but the psychotic speaker seems more reasonable for a poet like Dickinson.

This whole time I thought that this speaker was at her own funeral and was describing the sequences that occur when going from this life to the next. She was at her funeral and the speaker can sense that mourners were passing by his body. The speaker first speaks of the physical things happening around her, then in the line “Then Space- began to toll”, the transformation from this world to the next begins. The funeral wasn’t mentioned again. Bella’s interpretation of the poem is really intriguing though because after reading it a few times, there does seem to be constant repetition which is common for insane people. The mourners moving back and forth, the drums, the bell. It seems that there surely is a possibility the speaker is after all, crazy.

I found what Aiyanna wrote really interesting about how “Dickinson could have chosen to simply describe despair as what the speaker felt. Instead, Dickinson chose to describe the feeling as what the speaker did not feel, in comparison to death.” I think this displays real despair because the speaker is in worse place then someone who is dead. Dea…[Read more]

I found what Aiyanna wrote really interesting about how “Dickinson could have chosen to simply describe despair as what the speaker felt. Instead, Dickinson chose to describe the feeling as what the speaker did not feel, in comparison to death.” I think this displays real despair because the speaker is in worse place then someone who is dead. Dea…[Read more]

In “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, the poem has a negative tension because the speaker’s mind is affected by stress. The speaker cannot think clearly because he is depressed over his lost Lenore. It is implied that […]

I believe Poe chose the Raven as the main symbol of this poem because it has been believed that a Raven is the link between the living world and the afterlife. Ravens are also darkly colored and their caws, unlike most birds, are a deeper note. When cawing, I often feel that ravens sound like they are mocking someone. So I agree with Poe’s choice to use a raven. Poe’s works, whether it be poems or short stories are often dramatic, emotional, and dark. The alliteration adds to the drama of his work when one is reading. When previously reading this poem, I had not noticed the “negative tension.” I agree that it is caused by the stress of loss and I think it adds to the dramatic feelings created by the alliteration.